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Topic: My first questions (Read 7787 times)

Tell me please whether it is correct to say: "A bush of black currant" and "A kilo of black currants".

Please give me some examples of usage of collocation "unforgettable experience". Is it OK to say: I will tell you about my unforgettable experience of jumping with a parachute.You will have an unforgettable experience after visiting this museum!The experience I had from living with your parents was unforgettable.

Tell me please whether it is correct to say: "A bush of black currant" and "A kilo of black currants".

For the first example it would be correct to say "A black currant bush". Bush is the noun and the variety of bush, the adjective, would be the singular form. Your second phrase is correct, it is stating a quantity of a particular thing that has a plural form. In a different case one would say, for example "a kilo of flour" (no "s").

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Please give me some examples of usage of collocation "unforgettable experience". Is it OK to say: I will tell you about my unforgettable experience of jumping with a parachute.You will have an unforgettable experience after visiting this museum!The experience I had from living with your parents was unforgettable.

Thank you in advance!

For me, both the first and third examples are fine. For the second, if the museum visit is what is supposed to be unforgettable then the sentence might be something like "Visiting this museum will be an unforgettable experience for you." To my reading your second line with "will have" (simple future tense) gives the idea that it is *after* the museum visit that something unforgettable would happen.

Welcome to the forum.

Ebor

« Last Edit: November 13, 2007, 04:41:56 PM by Ebor »

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"I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", or even "Teach my performing dogs new tricks". - C. S. Lewis

This is a bit unusual for me, because in Russian language the names of small berries like strawberry, raspberry, currant, i.e. have no plural forms.

True. In Russian, it's always "zemlyanika," "malina" (singular), sort of like the English "shrimp" (and not "shrimps"). Curiously, in Ukrainian small berries can be called by nouns in plural (the Russian "zemlyanika," for example, in Ukrainian is "polunytsi," plural).

This is a bit unusual for me, because in Russian language the names of small berries like strawberry, raspberry, currant, i.e. have no plural forms.

That's very interesting. In English things like the berry names above can be singlar ("Have a Strawberry"), plural (I picked currents for a cake." as nouns and also used as an adjective "Strawberry ice cream" "That paint colour is called "raspberry".

Does this apply to larger fruits or things such as apples or such?

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I got it! Thank you!

You are most welcome. I hope that I do not come across as pedantic.

Ebor

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"I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", or even "Teach my performing dogs new tricks". - C. S. Lewis

No. The usage of the names of larger fruits in Russian is equal to English.But we have plural forms of "shrimp", "fish", "advice", "news", "jewelry", "travel" and "trouble" and you haven't

Well, there are less common usages of plurals for some of those words. Just dragging things out of my memory, you're right about "news" and "jewelry" and "advice" as far as I know. But the others do sometimes have a plural. For example there is the English recipe for "Potted Shrimps" and "fishes" is sometimes used as in the poem "The Puffin":

"He ate little fishes, which were most delicious, And he ate them for breakfast and he ate them for tea."

"Travels" is a noun in such titles as "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck and "Travels with my Aunt" - a movie and the tv program series with Rick Steves about traveling in various parts of the world.

English can be a bit complicated. But then it's a language that's willing to take words from *any* place.

Ebor

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"I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", or even "Teach my performing dogs new tricks". - C. S. Lewis

Thanks! The unstressed Russian "o" at the end of words always gives me trouble. If I'd just think about it for a second, I could avoid a lot of mistakes. i.e in Polish it is jabłko. But, us Poles aren't too lazy to fully pronounce our "o" But if I think too much, I get things confused. So I'll say чай to my grandfather rather than herbata and receive a skeptical glance. But Polish makes no sense with things like that since we make our herbata in a czajnik.